Library Links

This is a search program that you use to look up the name of a journal, magazine, or newspaper to see if the library has a link to an e-version or else has it in print. Don't use it to search for article titles.

Databases

Political science research is first reported by researchers in academic journals and books. Sometimes, research with a general interest will get reported in magazines and newspapers and this can be a big help to understanding. But most research grows and grows out of the news and out of public awareness. As interest in a topic grows, there begins to be a group of scholars who begin to connect with each other in a pattern you can see. The pattern emerges in who they cite or refer to in their work.

This citation pattern is called an invisible college and if you are going to write about a topic, it is best to get some awareness of who these scholars and their works are. Some scholars rise to prominence and have research that most other scholars refer to as the most accepted research. These are the big names you should know.

So, look in two different directions-- at the foundation works, the most accepted and cited research, and the newest research to see who is being cited most now.

Social Sciences Citation Index is the best tool for finding articles in a limited number of scholarly journals that scholars refer to most. This database is also the best for finding who has cited particular authors, articles and books in the select group of journals. This index is part of the bigger database Web of Science. Links to citations to an article that are listed in Web of Science also appear in Google Scholar.

Academic Search Premier This searches for articles from scholarly journals across many disciplines, as well as from many magazines and newspapers.

searches for published articles (and books) from the databases and online catalog, many of which are online. This is particularly good for an intitial general search and also for tracking down the full-text of a specific article when you have some citation details (author, words from the title.)

Google Scholar and Google Advanced Scholar Search Google Scholar is a subset of Google Web Search that searches specifically for scholarly materials such as peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and technical reports from broad areas of research. By searching Google Scholar from Temple's library web site through the links above, you will automatically have direct access, both on and off campus, to subscription articles already paid for through the library. Just look for the "Find Full-Text @ TU" link within search results. Keep in mind that Google Scholar uses rankings that will likely bring up highly cited material that may also be quite old to the top of the results. You can use the year range to limit to more current results (labeled "anytime" towards the top of the search results page in Google Scholar and "Date" in Google Advanced.)

Access World News News sources, primarily newspapers, from most of the countries in the world in English. LexisNexis Academic also has foreign newspapers and some foreign language sources. Library PressDisplay has actual scanned images of newspapers from around the world, usually in the language of the country.

Edited site that publishes "a wide range of scholarship from 1991 onward that includes working papers from university research institutes, occasional papers series from NGOs, foundation-funded research projects, proceedings from conferences, books, journals and policy briefs."

LexisNexis Academic
Rich source of full-text newspaper and magazine articles, as well as law and medical sources.

To find journal titles Temple University has access to, use the link to "Find Full-text" in the databases, or else use Journal Finder to look up the name of a journal.